The bachelor’s degree is America’s most commonly granted postsecondary degree—and most people equate it with a college education. Yet the associate’s degree is often a far more efficient route into good jobs than the longer, more expensive bachelor’s degree path. In this blog post, Mark Schneider shares recent data that ...
At 21, many foster youth “age out” of financial benefits and supports from the child welfare system—before they even finish college. Given the challenges they face, it’s not surprising that only 3 to 10 percent of them earn undergraduate degrees compared with 34 percent of young adults who weren’t in ...
Starting in January, the GED got a lot harder; while the overhaul makes sense, doing well now requires a new level of help that too few studying for it can get. In this blog post, Terry Salinger points to the need for adult charter schools and wraparound services to address ...
First-generation immigrants perform better in reading and math tests than their second-generation peers, who in turn outperform their third-generation classmates, according to a new study by Umut Özek and Northwestern University’s David Figlio. The pair followed the performance of Asian and Hispanic students in Florida, a population that mirrors national ...
Parents, teachers, schools, districts, states, and especially students all want schools that prepare graduates to thrive in the 21st century. In this blog post, Anne Mishkind asks what it means to be "college and career ready."
Do median wages paid to bachelor’s graduates demonstrate gender differences after “controlling” for choice across high and low paying programs of study? Data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that merges student level data with Unemployment Insurance wage data can provide an initial answer to this question. In this ...
Are teachers working in charter schools more effective in improving student outcomes compared to teachers working in traditional public schools? In this blog post, Umut Özek, a principal researcher at AIR, describes a new study in which he and his fellow authors examined the disparities in teacher effectiveness between charter ...
America’s universities rank high on almost any list of the world’s best universities, but this high esteem rests on a highly unequal distribution of wealth. With less than 4% of the 1,600 or so not-for-profit private universities reporting endowments of more than $1 billion each, why are they tax-exempt? As ...
Of all the talks that parents should have with their children, a frank conversation about college costs and debt should be the least uncomfortable. In this blog post, Donna Desrochers discusses the importance of talking with teenagers about real college costs and the real life consequences of one of the ...
A major theme addressed by President Obama is improving low-income students’ access to the nation’s most prestigious campuses. This goal is wrapped in “undermatching”—the idea that low-income students are not applying to the more selective colleges they could attend. But, as this blog post explains, perhaps the more important goal ...